In Roman mythology, Jupiter was the king of the gods - the Roman answer to Zeus. Today, we think of Jupiter as the 5th rock from the sun, and the biggest planet in our solar system. It is a gas giant, unlike our planet which is primarily composed of solid matter. Nonetheless it has a diameter 11 times greater than Earth, and its mass is more than twice all the other planets combined. Wiki tells us that it has at least 63 natural satellites or moons.
Fifteen years ago, a comet known as Shoemaker Levy 9 broke apart and collided with Jupiter. It was the first opportunity for scientists to witness an extraterrestrial collision, and also quite alarming. The largest impact left a spot 12,000 kilometers wide, releasing 6,000,000 megatons of TNT-equivalent energy. (This was only one of 21 independent strikes.) It has been speculated that a 20 kilometer-sized asteroid could be an extinction event, extinguishing ALL life on Earth.
Stephen Hawking: "Asteroid Impacts Biggest Threat to Intelligent Life in the Galaxy" speculates perhaps the reason that extraterrestrial life has not been discovered is that asteroid and comet strikes have extinguished it. A small collision 70 million years ago is speculated as destroying the dinosaur era.
Hubble takes a snapshot of Jupiter's black eye tells that Jupiter has recently suffered another large impact, although not the size of Shoemaker Levy 9. It is a gash about 5,000 miles long that was created when something fell from the sky. Mmm. Jupiter Our Cosmic Protector explains that Jupiter tends to protect Earth from deep space comets, those originating from the Oort cloud. Its gravity arguably helps keep those rocks in the asteroid belt from frequently breaking loose and colliding with Earth.
Do you think the ancient Romans knew this when they named their god?
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